Just over a year after the fire that devastated Glasgow School of Art’s iconic Mackintosh building, robbing students of their degree show, 90 of the artists affected have unveiled an exhibition of new work.
The Phoenix Bursary exhibition is the culmination of a six-month programme that provided studio space and living expenses to students whose work was lost or damaged in the blaze that raged through the category-A listed building in May, where students were preparing for their final-year degree show.
The exhibition, which opens to the public on Friday, is displayed throughout the Reid Building, the modern wing of the art school, which stands opposite the scaffolding-clad Mac building.
Some of the works reference the fire obliquely, but few of the artists have simply recreated their original final year work.
Melissa Maloco, who initially remade her degree show work using soot from the Mac fire, explained why she chose not to include it in her Phoenix contribution. “This show is very different to a degree show, and that feels appropriate. No one wanted to dwell on the fire, and your work develops a lot in a year, especially as a postgraduate when you no longer have the pressures of grading and tutors.”
Sean McManus’s degree show presentation, featuring 1940s kitchen equipment, miraculously survived the fire nearly intact, despite being in an adjacent studio to where the fire originated.
There is still some visible warping of the wooden base from the water that pooled in the basement after the fire, and rust on the handle. For McManus, the chance to finally display the work marks an important moment. “The materials keep the memory of what happened,” he explains. “I did different work on my bursary but I really wanted to exhibit this back at the art school: it was all set up last year and this feels like a good ending.”
As the former students rebuilt their portfolios, almost half stayed in Glasgow while the rest took up places offered at 21 institutions in 15 cities across the world, from Bergen to Buenos Aires.
Kate Gallagher’s canvases suffered too much smoke and water damage to be salvaged and, although she did at first attempt to reproduce them, “my work is quite instinctive and it was never really the same”, she explains. “After the fire I just wanted to make new and better work. It was really sad but I had to act like it had never happened.”
Rae-Yen Song was ready to move her nine-foot installation into the studios in the Mackintosh building just before the fire broke out. “I was running late, and planned to take the work over at 12.30, which was when the fire alarm went off.”
“When you’re in fourth year, your degree show feels more important than graduation, because you get to show your work for the first time,” Song explains. “You have this huge lead-up to it, and it’s heightened because you are all working in such close proximity, and suddenly that was all lost. This feels like a really good way to end. I think we’ve all mellowed.”
Although about 90% of the building was saved, the Mackintosh library, one of the world’s finest examples of art nouveau design, which housed many rare and archival materials as well as original furniture and fittings, was almost entirely destroyed.
Last November, forensic archaeologists began a systematic excavation of the debris, in order to identify and store items for salvage, in a process similar to that carried out after the Windsor Castle fire in 1992.
Glasgow School of Art estimates that the cost of restoring the building could reach £35m. Scottish ministers and the UK government have already pledged to contribute to a fund that aims to raise £20m for restoration, launched in June by actors Brad Pitt and Peter Capaldi, the latter a former student of the art school.
